GLIMPSES OF THE
FUTURE |
New Low Energy Desalination Device Clean drinking water is one of the world's most precious, and in many parts of the globe, most rare resources. Now a novel desalination device has been developed that reduces the energy needed to purify water to one-tenth of that required by conventional systems. The drawback to conventional desalination - the processes of converting salt water into drinking water - is the large amount of energy it consumes. Called Oasys, the new system uses a process called 'engineered osmosis'. Unlike conventional desalination systems, the Oasys system establishes an osmotic pressure gradient instead of using pressure or heat to force water through a purifying membrane. The approach exploits the fact that water naturally flows from a dilute region to one that's more concentrated when the two solutions are separated by a semipermeable material, thereby saving the energy normally needed to drive the process. Now, Stretchable Electronics Three university engineering professors have collaborated to develop a new design for stretchable electronics that can be wrapped around complex shapes, without a reduction in electronic function. The new mechanical design strategy is based on semiconductor nanomaterials that can offer high stretchability (up to 140%) and large twistability such as corkscrew twists with tight pitch (e.g., 90 degrees in 1cm). Potential uses for the new design include electronic devices for eye cameras, smart surgical gloves, body parts, airplane wings, back planes for liquid crystal displays and biomedical devices. Don't Have Your Wisdom Teeth Out! Stop! Don't make that dentist's appointment to have your wisdom teeth removed. If they're not causing you pain, keep them because one day they may provide stem cells which will grow a new tooth for you when you need it. Scientists at America's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research say that wisdom teeth are the ideal source for tooth stem cells. However regenerating a whole tooth is as complicated as rebuilding a whole heart, says Songtao Shi of the University of Southern California, who heads a team working on creating such a tooth. Not only do you have to create smart tissue (nerves), strong tissue (ligaments) and soft tissue (pulp), you've got to build enamel - by far the hardest structural element in the body. And you have to have openings for blood vessels and nerves. And you have to make the whole thing stick together. And you have to anchor it in bone. And then you have to make the entire arrangement last a lifetime in the juicy stew of bacteria that is your mouth. New Process Spots Cataracts Earlier Cataracts are the single biggest cause of blindness and are responsible for almost half of all cases worldwide. A new laser probe, originally developed for the U.S. space program, has been shown to detect the condition earlier than is otherwise possible. Its developers say that the technique can tell that a cataract is forming even when an eye looks perfectly clear. The new technique uses dynamic light scattering (DLS) to detect small proteins called alpha crystallins in the eye's lens. Alpha crystallins are a useful biomarker for future cataract development.
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Scientists Have Rethink! The Large Hadron Collider MIGHT Swallow The Earth CERN's Large Hadron Collider was hardly switched on last summer before it broke down. It certainly didn't have time to get up to the sort of speed and mass at which minute black holes might be produced. Back then scientists were busily reassuring the world that any black holes produced would by tiny and very short lived. Now they're not so sure. The question is not simply how quickly a mini-black hole decays but whether this decay always outpaces any growth. New calculations by Roberto Casadio at the Universita di Bologna have thrown up a tricky new prediction. In the past, it had always been assumed that black holes would decay in the blink of an eye. Not any more. Casadio and his colleagues say: 'The expected decay times are much longer (and possibly ≫ 1 sec) than is typically predicted by other models.' That doesn't sound good. And in the same week Toby Ord and his colleagues at the Institute For The Future Of Humanity at the University of Oxford have questioned our certainty about the risks associated with extremely rare but potentially catastrophic events. For example, the chances of the world's banking system collapsing were judged to be extremely remote. Miniature Blood Pressure Monitor Sits In Your Artery A miniature blood pressure monitor has been announced that will sit inside your femoral artery and monitor pressure 24 hours a day. The tiny device is being developed in Germany by Fraunhofer researchers together with the company Dr. Osypka GmbH. The sensor, which has a diameter of about one millimetre including its casing, measures the patient’s blood pressure 30 times per second. It is connected via a flexible micro-cable to a transponder unit, which is implanted under the skin. This unit digitises and encodes the data coming from the micro-sensor and transmits them to an external reading device that patients can wear on their belt. Plants Engineered To Produce New Compounds Chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have, for the first time, genetically altered a plant to produce entirely new compounds, some of which could be used as drugs against cancer and other diseases. The researchers produced the new compounds by manipulating the complex biosynthetic pathways of the periwinkle plant. It is claimed that this sort of manipulation offers a new way to tweak potential drugs to make them less toxic (and/or more effective). Taking The 'Shakes' Out Of Amateur Video In February 2009 software maker MotionDSP, based in San Mateo, California, will release a $40 download for PCs that could clean up some of the most annoying aspects of amateur video, from shakes to low light. The product, called vReveal, is aimed at the average home videographer who wants better clips but doesn't want to invest in serious video-editing software. A Better Projector For Mobile 'Phones' A year or so after Glimpses reported that a projector small enough to be mounted inside a mobile phone had been made, 3M has announced a miniature device than can project up to a 50-inch image while drawing only 1 watt of power. The new projector uses an advanced liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) electronic imager and is illuminated with multi-coloured light emitting diodes (LEDs) Back issues of 'Glimpses' are archived here. |